Posted
by
timothy
on Friday August 07, 2009 @12:36AM
from the just-please-don't-find-the-tickling-paths dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Historically, many scientists have regarded itching as just a less intense version of pain, though decades spent searching for itch-specific nerve cells have been unfruitful. Now, Nature reports that neuroscientist Zhou-Feng Chen and his colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri have found the first behavioral evidence that there are separate circuits of nerve cells to convey itchiness and pain, and their studies suggest that itch and pain signals are transmitted along different pathways in the spinal cord. 'Most people accept that there are specific, highly specialized neurons for sensations like taste,' says Chen. 'But for pain and itch this is much more controversial.'" (Continues below.)

"Two years ago, Chen's group discovered that a cell-surface protein called the gastrin-releasing peptide receptor (GRPR) is important for sensing itchiness but not pain in mice. When Chen and his colleagues destroyed GRPR-bearing neurons by means of a cell toxin, the mice reacted to painful stimuli just like normal mice, licking themselves and flinching or jumping in response to heat, highly irritant chemicals and mechanical pressure. But when the researchers injected the animals with chemicals that normally cause scratching, such as histamine, they barely responded, and the greater the number of GRPR-expressing neurons destroyed, the more subdued was the scratching response."

[...] the first behavioral evidence that there are separate circuits
of nerve cells to convey itchiness and pain, and their studies suggest that
itch and pain signals are transmitted along different pathways in the spinal
cord.

This got me thinking...

You know how it is when
you're stuck in a conversation at work with Bob the Office Drone and you get
a terrible itch building up in waves across your scrotum? The kind that
makes you force a smile on your face while you're thinking "Man oh man, I
wish Bob would fuck off so I could scratch myself!"

What if it's a hundred monkeys? A million monkeys? A billion? What if there's a 5% chance it might help? What if it's a researcher who thinks it might help, but hasn't been right to date?

As long as it's not an infinite number of monkeys brains being bashed in with an infinite number of typewriters because then we'd not only destroy the complete works of Shakespeare, but also the cure for every problem there is.

you're stuck in a conversation at work with Bob the Office Drone and you get
a terrible itch building up in waves across your scrotum? The kind that
makes you force a smile on your face while you're thinking "Man oh man, I
wish Bob would fuck off so I could scratch myself!"